The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

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PoE Secret Strengths – Danny Thorpe

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/02/15

Passed away, this makes still every good reading: [Wayback/Archive] PoE Secret Strengths – Danny Thorpe.

I wish both Danny and his site were still alive.

Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a standard (802.3af) for powering devices using voltage carried on “spare” wires in the Ethernet cable.  For devices that support being powered by PoE, it means you only need one cable to the device to connect it to network and provide power.  Only one cable to snake through walls and attics, and the device can be placed without regard to access to a power outlet.

PoE is rightfully marketed to business IT and is particularly well suited to devices such as IP security cameras, wireless access points, and IP phones. Unfortunately, targeting the business IT audience meant the devices tended to be a lot more expensive than consumer equivalents.

That is now changing. I’m finding a fair number of PoE PSE switches (PSE = Power Source Equipment, that supply power on the Ethernet wire) and PoE PD devices (PD = Powered Device) in the consumer price range.  They’re still listed under “business networking” rather than “home networking”, but at least they exist.

He mainly used Netgear PoE switches; I like the MikroTik ones better.

Note there are many Power over Ethernet standards and they have evolved over time. See Source: Power over Ethernet: Standard implementation – Wikipedia

–jeroen

Posted in Ethernet, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, PoE - Power over Ethernet, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Some links on SuperMicro X10 and “PEI–Could Not Find Recovery Image…”

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/02/06

An X10 machine here hardly needs reboots, but at one point it did, and got a dreaded message “PEI--Could Not Find Recovery Image...“, so I started Googling.

  1. [Wayback/Archive] “pei” “could not find recovery image” – Google Search returned only one Russian thread: [Wayback/Archive] Восстановление BIOS на Supermicro X10SRi.
  2. Hard to read, I dug further with [Wayback/Archive] “PEI–Could Not Find Recovery Image…” – Google Search and [Wayback/Archive] “pei could not find recovery image” – Google Search, which both went for inexact matches: bummer.

The good news is that few people bump into this problem. The bad news is that the ones that do, usually do not find a way to solve it. For example:

 

What helped in retrospect, was using IPMI (which still worked), re-flash the most recent BIOS, then powered down the machine and rebooted: it worked.

Not sure if I will be so lucky next time, but via [Wayback/Archive] supermicro “could not find recovery image” – Google Search , I found the the idea from [Wayback/Archive] X9SRL-F POSTs only via BIOS recovery process | ServeTheHome Forums that might help: solder a new BIOS Flash ship. Definitely not for the fainthearted: [Wayback/Archive] Bios Recovery via Chip Reprogramming Supermicro X10SLM+-LN4F | ServeTheHome Forums.

 

I got at the BIOS programming via IPMI idea via the second set of searches above, which got me at [Wayback/Archive] Supermicro BIOS recovery – SUPER.ROM – Server Fault (thanks anonymous [Wayback/Archive] user303507):

Get mainboards with a “-F” in the product name. Then you have IPMI and can even flash a faulty BIOS. It requires a key from Supermicro to activate this feature which is not for free

…

The 2nd flash area can also be fully impacted by a faulty flash process, therefore the trick with Ctrl+HOME does not work.

This worked because all my SuperMicro mainboards are of the “-F” type and I had the key.

If you don’t have the key it can be generated, for instance with the bash script I published in Supermicro Bios Update – YouTube.

You can find back most letters and numbers SuperMicro uses at [Wayback/Archive1/Archive2] Motherboards (Intel UP) | Product Naming Conventions | Super Micro Computer, Inc. which has a few tables like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Hardware, Mainboards, Power User, SAS/SATA, SuperMicro, X10SRH-CF | Leave a Comment »

If you want to connect to Twitter contacts on Mastodon, be quick: the new Twitter API changes might also break Mastodon discovery tools in a day or so. Run hemem before it’s too late!

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/02/06

If you are on Mastodon as well as Twitter, then run these tools today, as soon they will likely stop working:

Via [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Baert on Twitter: “General reminder that Twitter API changes might also break Mastodon discovery tools. So run em before it’s too late! Movetodon: movetodon.org Debirdify: pruvisto.org/debirdify Fedifinder: fedifinder.glitch.me“

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, Power User, WiFi | Leave a Comment »

Evan Kirstel #TechFluencer on Twitter: “😆 Your new job is to fix this. Where you do start? #DataCenter #avtweeps… “

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/16

Via: [Archive] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “This is what happens in every enterprise. Understaff and underpay Infrastructure people, hiring with peanuts gets you monkeys, then this, and next up an AWS cloud migration. The AWS is much more expensive, because you no longer get to cheat on infra cost.… “

[Archive] Evan Kirstel #TechFluencer on Twitter: “😆 Your new job is to fix this. Where you do start? #DataCenter #avtweeps… “

–jeroen

Posted in Ethernet, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Salvaging maxtor/seagate SATA drives from their USB external counterparts

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/01/02

Interesting idea from [WayBack] Western Digital toont prototype van compacte externe 8TB-ssd – Computer – Nieuws – Tweakers:

Dreamvoid
@lordawesome • 7 januari 2020 19:13

Voor harde schijven moet je altijd bij de externe drives kijken, die zijn goedkoper (even open schroeven).

– 5 TB 2.5″ HDD: 0.018 EUR/GB
– 6 TB 3.5″ HDD: 0.017 EUR/GB
– 2 TB M.2 SSD 0.103 EUR/GB
– 1 TB 2.5″ SSD 0.096 EUR/GB

Grofweg zit er een factor 5x tussen. Probleem met SSD’s is vooral de schaling, de sweet spot qua prijs zit daar bij 1-2 TB, wat je niet veel helpt als je bijvoorbeeld 10 TB nodig hebt.

[Reactie gewijzigd door Dreamvoid op 7 januari 2020 19:22]

Reageer
+1TimoDimo
@Dreamvoid • 7 januari 2020 19:57
Dat is voor het eerst dat ik zie dat externe schijven goedkoper zijn… Hoe kan dat in hemelsnaam?
Reageer
+1Dreamvoid
@TimoDimo • 7 januari 2020 20:34

Losse harde schijven (vooral 2.5″, die dingen gaan in rack servers) gaan allemaal naar de enterprise markt, waar de klanten merkentrouw zijn en niet op een cent kijken. De concurrentie voor consumenten (externe) drives is daarentegen moordend.

Het is ook een soort ‘overschot markt’ voor de fabrikanten, loopt de HDD productie goed en is de enterprise markt niet heel hot, dan duwen ze wat extra goedkope externe drives de consumentenmarkt in en wordt het prijsverschil groter. Neemt de enterprise sector wel veel af of zijn er productieproblemen, dan verdwijnt het prijsverschil weer grotendeels.

Let wel: Western Digital soldeert de USB interface vast bij hun externe 2.5″ drives, Seagate/Maxtor doet dat (nog) niet.

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, HDD, Power User, SSD | Leave a Comment »

Isotopp’s home sensor network

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/11/25

For my link archive an interesting blog post by isotopp (Kristian Köhntopp)

[Wayback] My home sensor network

I have been asked to document my home sensor network. Being married to a person with a background in web security sets boundary conditions:

  1. No cloud. We are running all services locally.
  2. No control, only metrics.

I am collecting data from a number of plugs with power meters over Wifi, using the MQTT protocol. I am also collecting data from a number of temperature sensors over Zigbee, and convert to MQTT. The MQTT data is ingested into Influx, and then read and plotted in Grafana. All of this is dockered and runs locally on an Ubuntu server.

Via [Archive] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “For @sluongng …”

–jeroen

Posted in Hardware, IoT Internet of Things, Power User | Leave a Comment »

SMLIGHT SLZB-06 – A Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet, USB, and WiFi adapter with PoE support – CNX Software

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/11/01

Want: [Wayback/Archive] SMLIGHT SLZB-06 – A Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet, USB, and WiFi adapter with PoE support – CNX Software

Startup SMLIGHT has launched the SLZB-06 Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet, USB, and WiFi adapter with PoE support that works out of the box with open-source software such as Home Assistant and Zigbee2MQTT.

The device combines Texas Instruments’ СС2652Р microcontroller for Zigbee with ESP32 for WiFi, data transfer to Ethernet or USB, and peripheral functions such as LEDs and a button.The design is complemented with Microchip LAN8720 for Ethernet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, ESP32, Ethernet, Hardware, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, IoT Internet of Things, Matter, MQ Message Queueing/Queuing, MQTT, Network-and-equipment, PoE - Power over Ethernet, Power User, Software Development, USB, WiFi, Z-Wave, Zigbee | Leave a Comment »

I had some Windows ATOM issues before, but this beats them easily

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/10/19

I’ve had some issues with Windows ATOM tables filling up, but nothing like this security bypass:

A new Windows code injection technique, atombombing, which bypasses current security solutions.

Source: AtomBombing: Brand New Code Injection for Windows – Breaking Malware [WayBack] with source code at BreakingMalwareResearch/atom-bombing: Brand New Code Injection for Windows

Note that since writing the first draft, the above AtomBombing article moved via Wayback: blog.ensilo.com to [Wayback/Archive.is] AtomBombing – A Brand New Code Injection Technique for Windows | FortiGuard Labs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, FortiGate/FortiClient, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Security, Software Development, VPN, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Development, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

LPRng: RESOURCES – PostScript, Epson, HP, Xerox, PPD, etc

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/09/28

When writing Some links on PostScript books and online content, back from the days, I archived [Wayback] Index of /RESOURCES from the site hosting the [Wayback/Archive.is] LPRng Web Page (see also LPRng on Wikipedia):

The LPRng software is an enhanced, extended, and portable implementation of the Berkeley LPR print spooler functionality. While providing the same interface and meeting RFC1179 requirements, the implementation is completely new and provides support for the following features: lightweight (no databases needed) lpr, lpc, and lprm programs; dynamic redirection of print queues; automatic job holding; highly verbose diagnostics; multiple printers serving a single queue; client programs do not need to run SUID root; greatly enhanced security checks; and a greatly improved permission and authorization mechanism.

The source software compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX systems, and is compatible with other print spoolers and network printers that use the LPR interface and meet RFC1179 requirements.

Subdirectories (the PPD one goes one level deeper with both files and directories; XEROX just has a subdirectory with one file):

–jeroen

Posted in Development, EPS/PostScript, Hardware, HP Printer Drivers, Power User, Printer drivers, Printers, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

The Hardware Hacking Handbook | No Starch Press

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/09/27

Want: [Wayback] The Hardware Hacking Handbook | No Starch Press

The Hardware Hacking Handbook

Breaking Embedded Security with Hardware Attacks
by Colin O’Flynn and Jasper van Woudenberg
November 2021, 512 pp.
ISBN-13:
9781593278748
Print Book (PREORDER) and FREE Ebook, $49.99
Ebook (PDF, Mobi, and ePub), $39.99
Hardware Hacking Handbook Cover

Via:

Some topics in the book are listed in [Archive.is] Colin O’Flynn on Twitter: “A random thread about a few things that @jzvw and I packed into The Hardware Hacking Handbook (note – this twitter thread is an advertisement, don’t be tricked into thinking this will be some nice useful stand-alone content). Roughly following book order:”.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Hardware, Hardware Development, IoT Internet of Things, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

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